This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/orlando-shooting-documents.html

The article has changed 3 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 1 Version 2
Orlando Shooting Records Raise Questions About Exit at Nightclub Gunfire and Panicked Calls on Police Log of Orlando Shooting
(about 4 hours later)
The Orlando nightclub where 49 people died this month faced tough questions Tuesday after records were released suggesting that a door was broken weeks before the massacre and that another door had been blocked by a soda machine the night of the shooting. It took just 16 minutes.
Records show that Orlando’s fire marshal reached out to the fire chief hours after the murders saying that an inspection had revealed an inoperable door. The deficiency was in a stack of reports that had been set aside to be assigned for a follow-up, which had not occurred by the time of the shooting, the city’s fire marshal, Tammy Hughes, wrote in an email message. Emergency calls from inside the Pulse nightclub poured into the Orlando police in the early morning of June 12 from panicked and wounded revelers reporting the bloody scene as it played out. Dispatchers noted that they, too, could hear gunshots in the background, according to a police log that was among hundreds of pages of documents about the massacre released by the city on Tuesday.
On the day of the shooting, Ms. Hughes sent a text message to the fire chief, Roderick Williams, saying, “code enforcement is here, showed me a picture where the club owner had blocked the exit with a coke machine he has pictures.” Crucially, the newly released documents do not make clear whether the nightclub, Pulse, had corrected the violation. If any exits were still blocked when the slaughter took place, the documents do not indicate whether anyone was prevented from escaping. The incident log gives a staccato narration, based on entries made in real time and time-stamped down to the minute and the second — the most detailed account yet of what happened after Omar Mateen, 29, armed with an assault rifle and a handgun, walked into a bustling club with a mostly gay and Latino clientele and opened fire.
But on Tuesday, the city backtracked from the information contained in its records, saying that there were no safety hazards on the night of the shooting. Gerald Lane, an Orlando deputy fire chief, said that no doors were blocked and that the inoperable door was an issue with a light bulb for the door’s exit sign. Calling the report of a blocked door premature, Chief Lane said that Pulse was in compliance with state and local fire codes. It shows the confusion as police officials tried to figure out what was happening, the horror of some victims reporting on their own gunshot wounds, and the abject fear of dozens of people trapped in pockets throughout the club, whispering into their phones, pleading for rescue, and hoping that the gunman would not come for them next.
“Nobody has commented about a blocked exit,” Chief Lane said an interview. “It was a rumor or a myth.” A lawyer for the club said none of its exit doors were blocked. Other documents released on Tuesday raised questions about whether one of Pulse’s exits might have been blocked.
The email mentioning the possible problem was among hundreds of documents released by city about the June 12 shooting, in response to public records requests from The New York Times and other news organizations. At the end of a three-hour standoff, for which some have criticized the police’s delayed response, 49 people had been killed and 53 wounded. But nearly all the slaughter took place in just those first 16 minutes.
On May 21, a Fire Department inspector went to Pulse for a routine check on its exits, and checked a box labeled “Exit Door or Hardware Inoperable,” but did not elaborate. The first report of shots fired came just before 2:03 a.m., and that awful message was repeated no fewer than 30 times, as caller after caller described the massacre, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, and sometimes just by picking up the horror in the background on their cellphones. Often, the entries say simply, “Still shooting,” or that people could be heard screaming. At one point, a dispatcher noted having “open line hearing 20-30 gunshots.”
After receiving the text message from Ms. Hughes, Chief Williams texted back, asking how many exits were blocked. Ms. Hughes replied, “maybe one or two.” The gunfire paused for 30 seconds or so, until at 2:08 a.m., the first police officers on the scene attempted to enter the building and engaged in a shootout with Mr. Mateen, who then retreated to a bathroom where people were hiding. Just before 2:19 a.m., about the time the city’s SWAT team was called out, the shooting stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the killer hunkered down for almost three hours with his hostages.
Ms. Hughes wrote in a text message, the city “will have to answer some tough questions” about the code violations. Twenty minutes later, she suggested to the chief a “great P.R. opportunity” for the Fire Department, by distributing water to people standing in line to donate blood for the survivors. But while the barrage was still underway, evidence of the grim toll began rolling in, noted by dispatchers in entries sprinkled with abbreviations like “c” for caller and “cadv” for “caller advises.”
In an email exchange shortly after they traded text messages, Chief Williams asked, “Did we follow up to confirm the exit was unblocked?” “Multiple down.” “Someone is screaming Im shot.” “My caller is no longer responding, just an open line with moaning.” “C is shot in the stomach.” “C is shot in the leg and knee.” “Cadv his friend (redacted) has been shot in the chest.” “Cadv sister has been shot twice.” “Cadv vic is losing a lot of blood.” “Cadv vic is no longer responding to him.”
Ms. Hughes wrote back that the Fire Safety Management Division received the inspection report on June 6, and “it was in the stack to be assigned and it was assigned to the fire inspector for follow up” sometime in June. That is within the normal follow-up time, she wrote, adding, “NO concerns about our practice at this time.” Hours after the shooting, the city’s fire marshal, Tammy Hughes, sent a text message to the fire chief, Roderick Williams, saying that a code enforcement official “showed me a picture where the club owner had blocked the exit with a coke machine.” Fire Department officials said Tuesday that the photo was taken on the day of the shooting, but that no exits had been blocked. A lawyer for the club, Gus R. Benitez, also insisted that all public exits had been clear.
Pulse had six exits, twice as many as needed to accommodate its occupancy limit, Ms. Hughes told the chief. The club, a popular spot for young gay people and Latinos, was approved to have as many as 360 people in it, and officials have said that at the time of the shooting, it had about 320. Ms. Hughes and Mr. Williams also traded emails on the day of the shooting about a May 27 inspection showing that “an exit was blocked.” But on Tuesday, officials refuted information contained in city records and said that there had been no blocked exit doors and that the only infractions were minor, nothing more serious than a nonworking light bulb in an exit sign.
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Fire Department, Ashley Papagni, said that “after a review of fire records, there is no pattern of exits being blocked inside Pulse, this includes the most recent exit check conducted on May 21, 2016.” Ms. Hughes wrote on June 12 that the Fire Department had planned another inspection to make sure the problem was corrected, but it had not yet taken place at the time of the shooting.
She added,“The fire engineer who conducted the exit check reports there were zero life-safety issues and two minor infractions.” During the nightclub siege, officers went into Pulse several times to bring out stranded survivors, while callers reported that they were still hiding or trapped in various bathrooms, an attic, an office, a dressing room. The incident log shows that they called repeatedly to report casualties and gunfire, warn that their phone batteries were dying, and express their dread at sounds indicating that the gunman may have been approaching. Some even called from the bathroom where the gunman was holed up to tell police what he had said and what he looked like.
Asked about the text messages mentioning the blocked door, Chief Lane said Tuesday that the soda machine supposedly blocking a door was outside the club. The photograph was taken from a distance and the interpretation was not accurate, he said. The texts, he said, “were sent prematurely without having facts.” “Subj in restroom whispering please help,” a dispatcher wrote. A few times, callers went silent or their calls went dead, leaving dispatchers no way of knowing if they were still alive.
Gus R. Benitez, a lawyer for Pulse, said the May 21 fire inspection simply turned up a missing exit-sign light bulb and a fire extinguisher that needed to be hung, both of which were corrected. At 2:35 a.m., Mr. Mateen called 911 himself to claim responsibility for the attack, and declared allegiance to the Islamic State, the F.B.I. has said.
“The lack of specificity and clarity in the fire department’s report is regretful,” Mr. Benitez said in a statement. The incident logs show the police trying to pin down the number and location of people still trapped inside Pulse, figure out which bathroom the gunman was in, and determine how serious a threat they were facing. Near the beginning, a caller reported (correctly) that the gunman had an assault rifle, while another reported (incorrectly) that there might be multiple shooters.
“As for the allegation that a public exit door was blocked, that is untrue,” he said, adding that none of the club’s six exits were blocked. “There is a door to the outside that is not used by anyone, whether they be employees or patrons. That door is in a room behind the bar where patrons are not allowed,” and is not an exit door. At 2:51 a.m., when Mr. Mateen was on the phone with a police negotiator, the F.B.I. has said, word came that took the potential danger to another level: “Shooter saying poss explosives in the parking lot,” and a few minutes later in the same call, “Subj is saying that he is a terrorist and has several bombs strapped to him in the downstairs female restroom.”
The gunman, Omar Mateen, entered the club at about 2 a.m. and fired on people with an assault rifle and a handgun, had a shootout with arriving police officers, and took hostages in a bathroom. Talking by phone with the police, he kept them at bay for three hours with threats — which turned out to be false — that he had explosives, and he declared allegiance to the Islamic State. In addition to the gunman’s own statements, several entries show the people trapped inside confirming that he appeared to have bombs, which turned out to be untrue.
After 5 a.m., the police stormed the club, traded gunfire with Mr. Mateen, killing him, and freed the people he held in a bathroom and others who were hiding in a D.J. booth, a dressing room and another bathroom. In addition to the gunman, 49 people died and 53 were wounded. At 4:21 a.m., the police rescued the people in a dressing room by pulling an air-conditioning unit out of an exterior wall, and some of those people warned that the gunman planned to strap explosive vests to four hostages. It was that information, officials said, that had persuaded them to make the final assault on the club, using explosives and an armored vehicle to punch through a wall.
City officials, responding to criticism that the police should have gone in sooner, have said that doing so would have put the hostages at risk, and that they used the time during the standoff to negotiate with the gunman and figure out how to get everyone safely out of the building. “SWAT breached,” the log says at 5:02 a.m. At 5:15, as the officers traded gunfire with Mr. Mateen, it notes, “Shots fired north bathroom,” and less than a minute later, “Subj down.”
The Fire Department said Tuesday that an official would be available later in the day to discuss the newly released documents. D.J.s who worked at the club said they had encountered no problems with the doors. An entry just before 5:18 a.m., using a police term for armed, states, “Bad guy down strapped.”